Barack Obama
Barack Obama's days of grand legislative accomplishment might be behind him, but in 2011, his foreign policy victories just kept piling up. The President dispatched the Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden, approved the drone strike that wiped out Anwar al-Awlaki and struck new trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. He also managed to help topple an Arab autocrat, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, without miring the U.S. in another decade of war. Things were tougher for Obama at home, where an uncooperative Congress made him fight for every inch on budget matters. But despite a disastrous debt-ceiling battle and a glacial economic recovery, the President managed to retool his jobs message and bring the fight to Republicans as his re-election campaign went into high gear in the fall.